Considered to be a major shift in Internet, Web 2.0 is a simple collaborative setup of Internet-enabled technologies, all of which need not be cutting edge.

WHO THEY ARE:

RACHANA SALGIA is the Vice President of Engineering and Research & Development, Impetus Technologies.

VINEET TYAGI is the Director of Engineering, Impetus Technologies.

Impetus Technology is a pure play outsourced product engineering services provider. It offers outsourced Software R&D, Testing, Quality Assurance and Support Services, exclusively to software and technology enabled companies. Impetus partners with its clients to create.i5ftware products. The focus of the company is on product engineering, together with a hold on technology and creating distinct value. It works as a virtual extension of its partners’ product engineering team, working seamlessly in a WhiteBox Engagement Model.

Web 2.0 is the new buzzword that emphasizes online collaboration and sharing among users. O’Reilly Media used the phrase as a title for a series of conferences and thereafter it became popular. In the year and a half since, “Web 2.0” has clearly taken hold, with more than 9.5 million citations in Google. But there’s still a huge amount of disagreement about just Web 2.0 means. Rachana Salgia, VP Engineering and R&D and Vineet Tyagi, Director Engineering, Impetus Technologies, demystify the term and its future.

CW: What is Web 2.0? Is there a standards body to endorse it?
RACHANA SALGIA: Web 2.0, a phrase coined by O’Reilly Media in 2004, refers to a perceived second generation of web-based services such as social networking sites, wikis, and communication tools that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users. It is not an update to the Internet or World Wide Web technical standards, but a perceived shift in how the existing standards are used. Though there is no common definition of Web 2.0 or a standardized interpretation of the concepts involved.

CW: How is it different from the current World Wide Web?
SALGIA: The phrase “Web 2.0” hints at an improved form of the World Wide Web which allows for more collaboration. Technologies such as weblogs, social bookmarking, wikis, social soft ware, Web APIs, and online web services are unique in web usage. Its various forms of many-to-many publishing make it a widely applicable and a user friendly technology platform.

CW: What does this technology do for its users? How do they benefit from it?
VINEET TYAGI: Web 2.0 signifies the transition of websites from isolated information silos to sources of con tent and functionality, thus becoming computing platforms serving web applications to end-users. It could also be referred to as a social phenomenon that allows for generating and distributing Web content characterized by open communication, decentralization of authority, freedom to share and re-use.

CW: It sounds like much of this has been happening for a while. Isn’t this just a marketing gimmick, selling another dotcom bubble?
SALGIA: Many of the ideas of Web 2.0 already featured on networked systems well before the emergence of this term. Some background work has been going on but it is only now the technology is gradually maturing. It is certainly not a marketing gimmick. The fact that the Web 2.0 rests on basic standards of the Internet but allows for more collaboration makes it a very interesting, and of course there is a lot of potential in this, both from the business models and general reader perspectives.

TYAGI Given the lack of set standards as to what it actually means, the term can mean radically different to different people. Also, when a web-site proclaims itself Web 2.0 for the use of some trivial feature (such as blogs or gradient-boxes) observers may generally consider it more an attempt at self-promotion than an actual endorsement of the ideas behind Web 2.0. In such circumstances it has sometimes sunk simply to the status of a marketing buzzword.

CW: How does the collaboration that Web2.0 otters, benefit its users?
TYAGI: As said earlier, Web 2.0 platform allows for open communication, decentralization of authority and an enhanced freedom to share and re-use. Since the users are allowed to add content and provide references, the basic premise of the platform is ‘collaboration’. It facilitates a higher level of content categorization, thus making it easier to find and understand. The emphasis on deep linking and cross referencing further makes it beneficial for all kinds of users since they can get different perspectives on a subject from a single window, and without having to search on various websites.

CW: Is there any Web 3.0 already? How will that be different from Web 2.0?
SALGIA: One viewpoint of Web 3.0 describes it as an evolutionary path for the Web that leads to artificial intelligence that can reason about the Web in a quasi-human fashion. Some companies such as IBM and Google are implementing new technologies that are yielding information such as making predictions of hit songs from mining information on college music Web sites. There is also de bate over whether the driving force behind Web 3.0 will be intelligent systems or whether intelligence will emerge from systems of intelligent people, such as collaborative filtering services that extract meaning and order from the existing Web and how people interact with it. Another viewpoint for Web 3.0 describes the Web transforming into a series of 3D spaces, taking the concept realized by Second Life further. This could open up new ways to connect and collaborate using 3D shared spaces.

CW: What is Impetus Technologies’ contribution to Web 2.0?
SALGIA: Impetus has invested significant time, effort and technology expertise to research open source technologies that can help leverage Web 2.0 concepts for new ideas or existing web applications or websites. We have developed its maturity model to equate the Web to a platform around which user can get services and data. We have a dedicated group of engineers trying to demystify Web2.0 and creating applications based on the platform. We already have some applications in this domain. One application, for instance is a Human Lost and Found portal concept based on social collaboration, participation and harnessing collective human effort for a common good. The portal supports human collaboration features to help find lost people. Another application, called Virtual Yatra is a Web2.0 portal that allows users to virtually explore tourist places.

CW: What areas are you addressing and what can customers gain from those technological/ commercial offerings?
TYAGI: We are working on emerging technologies that harness the potential of Web2.0. We are also working on some client projects that are based on creating collaborative web applications that are based on the concepts that define Web2.0 and allow for social interaction and participation.

BY RAHUL NEELMANI